SCHOOL VIOLATED U.S. CONSTITUTION, TEXAS LAW BY CENSORING CHRISTIAN VALEDICTORIAN

by KEN KLUKOWSKI 14 Jun 2013, 4:13 AM PDT

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Joshua High School officials didn’t just act like a school bully when they turned off a valedictorian’s speech after the speaker mentioned Jesus. They also violated Texas law and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Fox News’ Todd Starnes reported that when a Christian valedictorian at Joshua High School referenced his faith in his graduation speech, school officials literally turned the microphone off. The valedictorian has been accepted to the U.S. Naval Academy to become an officer, and Principal Mick Cochran threatened to write a letter to the Navy saying that this young man is of poor character, attempting to persuade the Navy to refuse allowing this talented student to attend.

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This is wrong on just so many levels. Let’s see if I can point out a few.

Gooferment Skrules — wrong on so many levels.

Valedictorian — agreeing to a set of conditions and then breaking them.

Skrule bureaucrats — redlining speeches. (Guess they have never heard of prior restraint?)

Principal — what a pal; threatening a little kid. (Yeah, if you can’t have sex with them figure out other ways to <synonym for the act of procreation> with their lives.

Christian — going into the military? (Guess he’s got a different interpretation of ‘blessed are the peacemakers’!)

The Navy — why do you want a trouble maker? (Think you can change him?)

Attorney General for the State of Texas — hey, there’s laws being broken! get a posse a go fix it. Or send a Texas Ranger.

Attorney General for the USA — Hey, you remember the First Amendment? Get on it. (Yeah, with the various -gates going on in the District of Corruption, this is chump change.)

What follows was part of a discussion on a well known “social media site”. I copied it because I thought it said a lot about a great divide in our country, the one between two kinds of people, two generations, two different world views, two different cultures. It was occasioned by the appearance of a cartoon showing the President of these Untied States wearing the clerical robes of a pope. It was s satirical cartoon designed for strong reactions, and it got them. People objected to the artist’s robing Obama as the Catholic Pontiff, commented on his support for abortion and his refusal to recognize the conscience rights of Catholics. Someone, a young woman, wrote:

I find it disturbing, but I’m mostly offended by the commentary it represents. I don’t like Obama, but I don’t find him to be any more “tyrannical” or arrogant than any other President we’ve had. Calling him a Communist really just illuminates one’s complete misunderstanding of communism, and the equation of abortion with the Holocaust as well as the implication that requiring insurance to cover birth control is equal to abortion, just pisses me off.

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As for the requirement that private employer’s insurance policies cover contraception – I could go on at length about the necessity of hormonal birth control for many women (such as myself) for entirely NON-birth control related reasons (if I don’t take it, I get terrible cysts due to my endometriosis – cysts that may very well prevent me from getting pregnant in the future when I choose to) – but also that I don’t think an employer, whether or not it’s the Catholic church, should be making the medical decisions of its employees. Removing one area of coverage allows others to be chipped away at – and employers and insurance companies may find it in their interest to lower premiums by not covering many routine [JR: My emphasis.] and/or necessary procedures they chose not to agree with for whatever reason.

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Stepping out from the pro-choice / pro-life debate for a moment, I’d suggest that we all focus for a moment on the word “routine”. To me that means, “ordinary and predictable”. And, are we talking about “insurance”? Where a bunch of folks with the same random risk profile pool their premiums to be paid out when that fire, flood, or tornado hits. Here we have a lady arguing that we, as a society, should “insure” “oil changes for our cars.” Where is the random disaster in an “oil change”? Went to aa Jiffy Lube / Oil Well / or some such place last week. In and out for under $100 in ½ hour. Now envision if it was insured. Call 1-800-thrid world country, file a report, yada yada. No way that was going to cost under $100 and less than ½ hour. In principle, it’s the same. Forcing “insurance companies” into the position of paying for “routine” stuff is just wrong. So, if this is NOT about “insurance”, then it must be about “politics”, propaganda, and manipulation. So this circles us back to the pro-life / pro-choice debate. Because it’s OBVIOUSLY NOT about “insurance”. imho. ymmv.